CW: Brief mention of torture.

Johann Gouten would always remember the sheets on his bed the night his mother whisked him away.

They were polka dots. The pattern was in sets of three, a series of bright and multicolored clusters on a yellow background.

His mom had woken him with a gentle swipe of the hair from his forehead. It’s the best choice, it’s the safest choice, she said to no one, something unusually soft in her eyes.

He still missed those sheets.

He still missed that version of his mom.

It had been more than two years since he’d been brought to the dormitories. They were barrack style, with half a dozen bunks, crisp white sheets and a single pillow for each student.

No stuffed toys. No storybooks. No fluffy rugs or twinkle lights.

Instead there were sealed concrete floors and solid walls of white blocks. There were five other children, all equally somber and serious, who Johann did not talk to apart from their daily classes.

You did not play, you did not sing, you did not run or laugh or smile.

You did your work, cleaned your bunk, and kept to yourself. You could read, but only text books. You could speak, but only about the mission.

The only time he saw his mother was in “conditioning.”

She watched him with glossy eyes and no expression, her brow almost imperceptibly furrowed as she listened to his screams. The feeling of his budding power being torn from him was second only to the ways they forced his body to bend a break beneath their hands.

The mom back home would have never used her attribute against him. She wouldn’t steal the golden glow for his eyes so others could drive blades beneath his nails. She would smile and dance with him in his light.

This mother said nothing.

That was why, by age six, Johann Gouten had learned to keep his mouth shut, do what he was told, and more than anything else: